Watch Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood For Free

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This spoof of early-1990s "hood" movies is like an R-rated "Naked Gun" - on crack. It's sometimes funny and clever (I liked the gag of father and son being the same age (!), or the raining autumn leaves), other times vulgar and witless. And it's too long (a full 90 minutes) for this kind of plot-less parody. The title may be the best joke of them all! ** out of 4.

It probably would have helped if I'd seen all (or at least some) of the movies that this parodies, but as it stands, DON'T BE A MENACE is consistently funny enough on its own. From the Wayans' Brothers, DON'T BE A MENACE parodies/spoofs just about every "hood" movie from the 90's, like BOYZ N THE HOOD, MENACE 2 SOCIETY, etc. Shawn Wayans stars as Ashtray, a 19-year-old who moves in with his younger (than him) father, and Marlon Wayans as Loc Dog, one of his friends. If there's one big weakness, it's that there's not really a plot to speak of, meaning that the film plays like a series of skits rather than a cohesive story. That being said, there were a lot of laugh-out-loud moments and funny running gags. The best ones, to me, were Keenen Ivory Wayans as the mailman who pops up from time to time and says "Message!" whenever the "preachy" moments come. Also, everyone (and I mean everyone) drinks only malt liquor. Generally, the humor that works the best has to do with pointing out stereotypes in these types of movies (and life in general), rather than the scatological stuff which was often a little too gross for me. Thankfully, it wasn't relied upon as much as it is now in movies of this ilk, but fart jokes and foul-mouthed grannies will only get you so far. For those types of jokes, they were funny the first few times, but became a little tiresome later. This is also an extremely quotable movie, with such memorable lines as, "Break yo self, fool!" So, while I haven't seen really any of the movies this parodied, I have seen other Wayans' Brothers movies and this compares favorably to those. I'd consider this the last genuinely good spoof from them, even if the story structure is all but nonexistent. It doesn't really live up to Mel Brooks (but honestly, what can?), but as a distillation of 90's urban movie clichés, DON'T BE A MENACE is on fairly solid ground.

Don't be a Menace is one of the funniest films of all times. It takes a serious genre of film and picks apart every detail of it. This film shows no mercy. It is only out for entertainment. The most pivotal, gritty, and shocking scenes from hood movies, the ones that defined the genre and changed the way Americans thought about cinema and society, are spoofed mercilessly from the preachy Ice-Cube monologue at the end of Boyz in the Hood to the Asian convenience store in the beginning of Menace II Society...This movie has gotten shockingly bad reviews but I imagine these people have never seen hood films. Either that or they are the type that want to take everything too seriously. This is not a movie to think about and analyze or drag politics into... it is a film to enjoyFrom the opening comment spoofing the Boyz intro ("one out of every ten black males will be forced to sit through at least one growing up in the hood movie in their lifetimes") to the ending scene, you will be in pain from the laughter this film will ensue if you have grown up watching hood films.This movie is one giant stereotype which people might pick at, but that is ultimately the point. While films like Menace II Society and Boyz have become classics of the 90s, they have also played on age old stereotypes and that is the heart of this film.Pickles, anyone?

I was watching an old "Honeymooners" rerun with a friend and we came to Jackie Gleason's Ralph's inevitable "To the moon, Alice!" expression of frustration with his wife, and suddenly I realized that it WAS inevitable, so why were we laughing, having heard it a dozen times before? My friend pointed out that Gleason's timing - the manner in which he held his slow-burn, the widening of his eyes, the sudden "Bang! Zoom" take off into the line - was what always made it funny. We weren't laughing at the line so much at the performance of it."Don't Be A Menace" is the most obvious collection of predictable gags and bits I have seen in a long time, but it is by far the funniest. The Wayans are rather stuck - the genres they parody here have very rigid conventions, so much so that there is usually only one or two gags one can use to mock them - e.g., when a young gangsta warns us that many young men in the 'hood don't live to see their 21st birthday, we all know what's coming next. So the Wayans handle it in a manner that delays the punchline while emphasizing its obviousness. Thus we laugh with them, appreciating the way they pull it off, and recognizing the gangsta genre limit that's getting parodied, rather than at the bit itself.Just about the whole movie operates on this level, and for this reason has become one of my favorite comedies. The Wayans capture every moment with a dead-on rhythm that blends the gags into a kind of music. Shawn plays the steady bass while Marlon does some wild riffing. Other characters and bits drop in and out like improvisation and sound effects. Keenan Wayans drops in every now and then like the voice on a scratch dub. The tempo could have been a little swifter, but the rhythm itself is excellent.Comedy like this is very tricky, and I personally didn't think the Wayans' efforts in the "Scary Movie" films were quite as successful - but here they move it right along.It's rude, it's crude, it's in-yor-face - and it's just a delight to watch.